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Avery  Architectural  and  Fine  Arts  Library 
Gift  of  Seymour  B.  Durst  Old  York  Library 


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http://archive.org/details/newyorkfromflatiOOsalt 


MUNSEY'S  MAGAZINE. 


Vol.  XXXIII. 


JULY,  1905. 


No.  4. 


NEW  YORK  FROM  THE  FLATIRON. 

BY    EDGAR    SALT  US. 

THE  MOST  EXTRAORDINARY  PANORAMA  IN  THE  WORLD-A  SURVEY 
OF  THE  AMERICAN  METROPOLIS  FROM  ITS  FOCAL  POINT  AT  THE 
CROSSING  OF  ITS  TWO  MOST  FAMOUS  THOROUGHFARES, 
BROADWAY    AND     FIFTH  AVENUE. 

4  \  A /HAT  do  you  know  of  New  York?  "  too,  of  paradise.  Manhattan  may  typify 

said  one  wanderer  to  another.  both.    It  represents  other  things  also. 

"  Only  what  I  have  read  in  Dante,"  The    latter,    mainly,    are  superlatives, 

was  the  bleak  reply.  From  the  top  floors  of  the  Flatiron  you 

Dante  told  of  the  inferno.   He  told,  get  an  idea  of  a  few.    On  one  side  is 


Madison  Square  Garden  and  Tower. 


East  River. 


Long  Island  City. 


PA' 


8*© 

mm 


_'4 


Madison  Square. 

VIEW  FROM  THE   UPPER  FLOORS  OF  THE    FLATIRON  BUILDING,  LOOKING  TO  THE   NORTHEAST  ACROSS 
MADISON  SQUARE  TO  THE  UPPER  EAST  SIDE  OF  NEW  YORK  AND  THE  EAST  RIVER, 


Appellate 
Court-House. 


Dr.  Parkhtirst'i 
New  Church. 


Dr.  Parkhurst's 
Present  Church. 


WITH  LONG   ISLAND  IN  THE  DISTANCE. 


2  M 


;;s2  Ml'NSEY'S 

Broadway.  Barring  t  r:i»l«-  rentes,  Broad- 
way i-  the  longest  commercial  stretch  on 
the  planet.  On  the  other  side  La  Fifth 
Avenue.  Barring  aothing,  Fifth  Avenue 


MAG  \Z1NR 

The  beetles  arc  cabs;  the  ants  are  be- 
ings — primitive  bu1  human,  full  of  soap- 
bubble  loves  and  hates,  of  ephemeral 
cares  and  j<»ys  as   insecure,  hurrying 

Qreenpolnt.  East  Kiver. 


is  the  richest  thoroughfare  in  the  world. 
From  the  t<»p  floors  of  the  Flatiron  each 
looks  meaner,  almost  mean.  In  them  are 
things  that  you  would  take  for  hectics, 
others  that  seem  to  you  ants. 


grotesquely  over  the  most  expensive  spot 
on  earth.  They  hurry  because  everybody 
hurries,  because  haste  is  in  the  air.  in 

the  effrontery  of  the  impudent  "step 
lively,"  in  the  hammers  of  the  ceaseless 


NEW  YORK  FROM  THE  FLATIRON. 


383 


skyscrapers  ceaselessly  going  up,  in  the  the  west  is  a  fourth.  Beneath  them  are 
ambient  neurosis,  in  the  scudding  motors,  great  ocher  brutes  of  cars,  herds  of 
in  the  unending  noise,  the  pervading  them,  stampeding  violently  with  grind- 
scramble,  the  metallic  roar  of  the  city.  ing  grunts,  and,  on  the  microbish  pave- 

Williamsburg.  New  East  River  Bridge.  Brooklyn. 


Beyond  is  the  slam-bang  of  the  Sixth 
Avenue  Elevated  careering  up-town  and 
down,  both  ways  at  once.  Parallelly  is  the 
Subway,  rumbling  relentlessly.  Farther 
east  are  two  additional  slam-bangers.  To 


ments,  swarms  such  as  Dante  may  indeed 
have  seen,  but  not  in  paradise. 

In  the  morning  they  are  there,  scurry- 
ing to  their  toil;  at  high  noon  to  their 
food;  at  evening  to  their  homes;  at  night 


M1NSKVS  MAGAZINE. 


Brooklyn  Skyscrapers  of 

Bridge.  lower  New  York. 


VIEW  FROM  THE  FLATIRON  BUILDING,  LOOKING  TO  THE  SOUTHEAST,  DOWN  BROADWAY  TO  UNION 

SQUARE  AND  REYOND. 


NEW  YORK  FROM  THE  FLATIRON.  38i 

Skyscrapers  of  Staten  Statue  of  Pennsylvania  Jersey 

lower  New  York.  Island.  Liberty.  Station.  City. 


VIEW  FROM  THE  FLATIRON  BUILDING,  LOOKING  TO  THE  SOUTHWEST.  DOWN  LOWER  FIFTH  AVENUE. 


386  MrXSEY'S 

to  amusements  more  laborious  than  their 
work.  When  they  are  nol  then-  you  do 
not  know  it.  Save  at  night,  when  the 
crowd  moves  elsewhere,  always  are  there 

Jersey  lloboken. 
City. 


MAGAZINE. 

rearing  its  knifish  face  with  the  same  dis- 
dain of  tlie  ephemeral  that  the  Sphinx 
displays,  knowing  that  she  has  all  time 
as  we  all  have  our  day. 

Castle  Oranpe  Mountain 

Point.  (in  distance). 


Sohmer  West  Twenty- 

Building.  Second  Street. 

VIEW  FROM  THE  FLATIRON  BUILDING,  LOOKING  WESTWARD  TO  THE   HUDSON  RIVER  AND   BEYOND  IT 

TO  THE  NEW  JERSEY  SUBURBS' — 


compact     throngs,     always    are    there  Ages  ago  the  Sphinx  was  disinterred 

stream*   of    incarnated  preoccupations,  from  beneath  masses  of  sand  under  which 

pouring  from  whence  yon  cannot  say,  it  had  brooded  interminably.  Yet  in  its 

to  where  yen  cannot  tell;  human  streams  simian  paws,  its  avian  wings,  in  its  body 

which  the  Flatiron  cleaves  indifferently,  which  is  that  of  animal,  m  its  lace  which 


NEW  YORK  FROM  THE  FLATIRON. 


387 


is  that  of  a  seer,  there,  before  Darwin, 
before  history,  by  a  race  that  has  left  no 
other  souvenir,  in  traits  great  and  grave, 
the  descent  of  man  was  told. 

Weehawken. 


cisely  as  these  huts  were  once  regarded 
as  supreme  achievements,  so,  one  of  these 
days,  from  other  and  higher  floors,  the 
Flat  iron  may  seem  a  hut  itself. 

West  Shore  The  Subway 

Station.  Palisades.  Power-House. 


West  Twenty-  Fifth  Avenu 

Third  Street.  Hotel. 


— THE   RETAIL   SHOPPING   DISTRICT   OF   NEW  YORK   CENTERS    AT   ABOUT  THIS   POINT  ;  IMMEDIATELY 
ABOVE  IT  (TO  THE  RIGHT )  BEGINS  THE  REGION  OF  HOTELS  AND  THEATERS. 


There  remained  his  ascent.  Ages  hence 
the  Flatiron  may  tell  it.  For  as  you  lean 
and  gaze  from  the  toppest  floors  on 
houses  below,  which  from  those  floors 
seem  huts,  it  may  occur  to  you  that  pre- 


Evolution  has  not  halted.  Undiscern- 
ibly  but  indefatigably,  always  it  is  pro- 
gressing. Its  final  term  is  not  in  existing 
buildings  or  in  existing  man.  If  human- 
ity sprang  from  gorillas,  from  humanity 


388  MUNSEY'S  MAGAZINE. 


Upper  Victoria  Upper  Fifth  Belmont 

Broadway.  Hotel.  Avenue.  Hotel. 


Fifth  Avenue 
Hotel. 


Worth 
Monument. 


VIEW  FROM  THE   FLATIRON  BUILDING, 
LOOKING     TO    THE    NORTH  UP 
BROADWAY    AND  FIFTH 
AVENUE. 

gods  shall  proceed.  The  story  of 
Olympus  is  merely  a  tale  of  what 
might  have  been.  That  which 
might  have  been  may  yet  come  to 
pass.  Even  now,  could  the  old 
divinities,  hushed  forevermore, 
awake,  they  would  be  perplexed 
enough  to  see  how  mortals  have 
exceeded  them.  The  inextinguish- 
able laughter  which  was  theirs  is 
absent  from  the  prose  of  life. 
Commerce     has     alarmed  their 


NEW  YORK  FROM  THE  FLATIRON. 


389 


afflatus  away.  But  the  telegraph  is  a 
better  messenger  than  they  had,  the 
motor  is  surer  than  their  chariots  of 
dream.  In  Fifth  Avenue  inns  they  could 
get  fairer  fare  than  ambrosia,  and  be- 
hold women  beside  whom  Venus  would 
look  provincial  and  Juno  a  frump.  The 
spectacle  of  electricity  tamed  and  do- 
mesticated would  surprise  them  not  a 
little,  the  Elevated  quite  as  much,  the 
Flatiron  still  more.  At  sight  of  the  latter 
they  would  recall  the  Titans  with  whom 
once  they  warred,  and  slink  to  their 
sacred  seas  outfaced. 

In  the  same  measure  that  we  have  suc- 
ceeded in  exceeding  them,  so  will  poster- 
ity surpass  what  we  have  done.  Evolu- 
tion may  be  slow,  but  it  is  sure ;  yet,  how- 
ever slow,  it  achieved  an  unrecognized 
advance  when  it  devised  buildings  such  as 
this.  It  is  demonstrable  that  small  rooms 
breed  small  thoughts.  It  will  be  demon- 
strable that  as  buildings  ascend  so  do 
ideas.  It  is  mental  progress  that  sky- 
scrapers engender.  From  these  parturi- 
tions gods  may  really  proceed — beings, 
that  is,  who,  could  we  remain  long  enough 
to  see  them,  would  regard  us  as  we  re- 
gard the  apes. 

Meanwhile,  on  those  toppest  floors,  the 
eager  sun,  aslant,  shuttles  the  mounting 
roar.  In  the  noise  and  glare  you  need 
but  a  modicum  of  imagination  to  fancy 
yourself  contemplating  a  volcano  in  ac- 
tive operation,  one  that  is  erupting  gold, 
coining  dollars  in  its  depths,  and  tossing 
them  in  the  crystalline  air — whence  they 
fall,  as  rain  falls,  on  those  who  know 
enough  not  to  come  in,  who  get  in  the 
way,  fight  for  a  place,  and  hold  it  until 
they  have  made  their  pile.  It  is  not  of 
course  from  such  as  these  that  gods  shall 
come,  rather  a  race  similar  to  the  curious 
dwarfs  of  whom  Pliny  told,  pygmies  that 
passed  their  lives  fighting  with  phan- 
toms for  coin.  So,  too,  fight  those  that 
you  behold  from  the  toppest  floors.  The 
struggle  is  the  impetus  of  their  little 
lives,  the  substance  of  their  loves  and 
hates;  it  is  the  magnet  that  draws  them 
from  regions  quasi-polar,  wholly  tropical, 
from  zones  remoter  yet,  from  those 
nethermost  planes  where  Dante  went. 

Above  them,  indifferently,  the  Flatiron 
looms.  Semi-animate  as  the  motor  is, 
superhuman,  vibrant  with  a  life  of  its 
own,  from  its  hundred  eyes  it  stares. 
Below  is  Madison  Square,  circled  with 
hotels,  clubs,  apartment  houses,  office- 
buildings,  and  a  church.  The  church  is 
that  of  Dr.  Parkhurst.  The  vast  building 
adjacent  is  an  insurance  company's — 
be  Metropolitan  Life.    On  the  white 


corner  above  is  the  Appellate  Division 
of  the  State  Supreme  Court.  On  the 
next  corner  is  the  Madison  Square  Gar- 
den, the  home  of  the  horseshow,  the 
circus,  and  the  French  ball.  To  the  north 
and  east  gasp  a  few  surviving  huts.  To 
the  left,  on  Broadway,  is  the  Fifth  Ave- 
nue Hotel.  In  days  gone  by  it  was  a 
great  place  for  honeymoons.  Now  it  is 
even  a  greater  place  for  politicians  of 
the  Eepublican  brand.  A  bit  above  is 
the  Hoffman  House,  which  the  haunted 
Stokes  made  agreeable  for  everybody  in 
general  and  for  Democrats  in  particular. 
Higher  up  on  Broadway  are  other  hos- 
telries  either  equally  famous  or  with  the 
future  in  which  to  accumulate  renown, 
the  old  Gilsey  for  instance,  the  older  Vic- 
toria, the  new  Astor,  and  the  Breslin 
newer  still.  On  Fifth  Avenue  are  more, 
the  Holland,  the  Waldorf,  the  St.  Regis. 
There,  too,  is  the  Knickerbocker  Trust 
Company,  quite  Greek  in  appearance, 
and  Tiffany's,  which  is  quite  as  French. 

Of  the  two  thoroughfares,  Broadway 
is  the  older.  Originally  called  the  Breede 
WTeg,  it  began  with  the  beginning  of 
things,  when  New  York  was  Nieu  Am- 
sterdam and  talked  Dutch  instead  of 
slang.  The  incipiency  of  Fifth  Avenue  is 
more  modern.  It  occurred  a  little  prior 
to  the  Civil  War.  A  bit  later  a  residence 
thereon  was  endearingly  regarded  as 
quite  equivalent  to  a  title.  As  far  as  it 
went — and,  until  within  relatively  recent 
years,  it  did  not  straggle  much  above 
Forty-Second  Street — it  was  a  wholly 
residential  stretch  of  brown-stone  fronts. 

The  first  to  put  a  shop  on  the  holy  site 
was  Mrs.  Paran  Stevens.  The  deed, 
highly  radical,  was  regarded  as  sacrilege. 
The  late  Mr.  Lorillard,  a  tobacco  mer- 
chant, objected  strenuously.  Said  Mrs. 
Stevens,  who  was  quick  with  her  tongue : 

"  You  would  not  mind,  now,  would  you, 
if  it  were  a  tobacco  shop?" 

Then  Mr.  Lorillard  shut  up.  But  that 
which  the  lady  began  others  continued, 
the  result  being  that  residentially  Fifth 
Avenue  has  moved  from  Washington 
Square  to  the  Plaza. 

West  of  it  is  the  river  to  which 
Hudson  came,  viewing  from  his  little 
boat  silent  spaces  crammed  now  with 
tooting  craft,  where  dock  liners  leviathan 
as  skyscrapers.  Further  up  are  the  Pali- 
sades. Further  down  is  Staten  Island, 
between  which  and  Manhattan  the  orig- 
inal Vanderbilt  pursued,  like  Sappho's 
lover,  the  highly  genteel  avocation  ^  of 
ferryman,  landing  his  fares  where  rises 
the  Immigration  Bureau  to-day  and 
where  the  primal  skyscrapers  began. 


390 


MUNSEY'S  MAGAZINE. 


Thence  upward  with  the  stream  of 
life  the  city  flows,  halting  occasionally, 
occasionally  too  circumscribed,  as  in  the 
lower  East  Side,  which  is  a  caldron,  or 
in  the  Chinese  quarter,  which  is  a  sewer. 
Over  the  way  there  is  a  glimpse  of  the 
nameless  shames  of  architectural  Long 
Island,  the  infinite  horrors  of  Williams- 
burg. Yet  with  the  glimpse  comes  the 
saving  savor  of  the  salt  of  the  sea.  There 
are  compensating  vistas  also,  the  pillars 
of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge,  the  statue  of 
Liberty,  the  high  Byzantine  dome  on 
Park  Row,  more  distantly  the  roof  of 
the  Pennsylvania  Railway  station,  a  roof 
presently  to  be  duplicated  not  far  from 
the  Grand  Central,  in  front  of  which 
already  rises  the  unfinished  Belmont 
House,  the  tallest  of  tall  hotels. 

Intermediately,  a  half  dozen  streets  to 
the  rear  of  the  Flatiron,  lies  Union 
Square,  a  bedlam  of  business  and  traffic, 
but  which  within  the  memory  of  the 
present  writer  was  a  sedate  residential 
quarter,  girdled  with  balconied  houses 
that  were  festooned  with  honeysuckle 
bursting  in  the  eager  spring.  The  peace 
that  was  there  survives  still  in  New  York, 
but  only  in  Gramercy  Park  and  lower 
Fifth  Avenue,  which  latter,  fusing  at 
Fourteenth  Street  with  the  general  pan- 
demonium, knows  no  respite  until  it 
reaches  the  auriferous  precincts  above 
the  St.  Regis  and  the  Plaza,  where  the 
newer  plutocracy  resides. 

Indifferently  on  these  things  the  Flat- 
iron  stares.  Its  front  is  lifted  to  the 
future.  On  the  past  its  back  is  turned. 
Of  what  has  gone  before  it  is  American 
in  its  unconcern.  Monstrous  yet  infantile, 
it  is  a  recent  issue  of  the  gigantic  up- 
heaval that  is  transforming  the  whole 
city,  and  which  will  end  by  making  it  a 
curiosity  to  which  people  will  come  and 
stare  as  they  do  at  cataracts  and  big  caves 
and  great  trees  and  fat  women  and  what- 
ever else  is  abnormal.  Yet  the  changes, 
however  disconcerting,  are  but  tokens 
of  others  to  be.  In  certain  aspects  New 
York  still  preserves  its  old  colonial 
squalor.  In  others  it  presents  the  hasty 
hideousness  of  boom  towns.  In  the  lin- 
gering streets  of  brown-stone  fronts  it  is 
embryonic  still.  Near  the  rivers  it  has 
thoroughfares  and  avenues  which,  in 
ruthless  atrocity  and  shuddersome  ugli- 
ness, are  nightmares  in  stone.  But  these 
are  as  measles  and  mumps  to  a  child. 
They  are  not  definite  conditions.  Nor  is 
there,  nor  will  there  be,  anything  definite 
here  until,  from  the  Battery  to  the  Plaza, 
the  buildings  one  and  all  are  so  huge  that 
nothing  huger  is  possible. 


Existing  department  stores  are,  one 
might  think,  sufficient  in  dimensions. 
Not  a  bit  of  it.  A  new  one  is  planned 
that  is  to  cover  an  entire  square  from 
Fifth  Avenue  to  Madison,  and  to  ap- 
proach the  Flatiron's  height.  The  mas- 
siveness  of  that  will  be  duplicated,  trip- 
licated, multiplied  over  the  town.  Sooner 
or  later  there,  where  now  are,  say,  eighty 
or  a  hundred  buildings  to  a  square  there 
will  be  but  one.  After  the  fashion  of 
a  Broadway  department  store  which, 
outgrowing  the  square  it  occupies,  has 
reached  out  and  subterraneously  an- 
nexed a  building  across  the  way — after 
this  suggestive  fashion  it  is  indicated 
that  emporiums  of  the  future  will  cover 
two  squares — three,  perhaps;  that  no 
hotel,  no  apartment  house  or  office- 
building  will  be  really  content  with  less 
than  one,  and  that  however  it  may  be 
elsewhere,  on  the  thirty-five  streets  be- 
tween Twenty-Third  Street  and  the 
Plaza,  Fifth  Avenue  will  contain  not 
many  more  than  seventy  structures, 
about  one  to  each  square,  structures  ex- 
tending back  on  the  west  to  Broadway  or 
Sixth  Avenue,  on  the  east  to  Madison, 
with,  on  these  arteries,  similar  struc- 
tures, similarly  extending,  repeating 
themselves  to  the  river  fronts. 

That  is  what  people  will  come  to  see. 
It  will  be  horrible;  but  analyze  the  hor- 
rible, and  sometimes  you  find  the  sub- 
lime, again  the  unique,  occasionally  the 
commercial.  The  three  derivatives  pres- 
ent here  will  provide  a  spectacle  shame- 
ful and  superb,  a  congerie  of  temples  for 
the  deification  of  gold,  a  city  of  basilicas 
for  the  glory  of  greed.  In  somnolent 
Nieu  Amsterdam,  Nicholas  was  patron 
saint.  These  shall  be  the  gods  of  Man- 
hattan. Yret  are  not  its  deities  now  these 
divinities,  whose  worship  is  haste,  whose 
incense  is  noise,  and  whose  swarming 
suppliants  you  mistake,  from  those  upper 
floors,  for  insects? 

Tennyson  compared  humanity  to  so 
many  gnats  in  the  glare  of  a  million 
million  of  suns.  Insects  they  are.  But 
they  shall  pass  as  Nieu  Amsterdam 
passed,  as  passed  the  race  unknown  that 
left  the  Sphinx. 

In  their  stead  will  be  beings  more 
august.  In  the  mounting  wonders  of 
the  city  to  be,  humanity  will  mount  also. 
It  will  deny  its  false  gods,  reverse  their 
altars,  and,  on  the  pile  it  has  made,  re- 
construct Olympus.  From  the  toppest 
floors  you  get  a  vision  of  that  in  the 
significant  sunsets  and  prophetic  dawns. 
You  see  strange  things  from  the 
Flatiron. 


